Safeguarding Children and Adults in the Arts...

01 June 2017

The Ulster Scots Agency would like to take this opportunity to promote the Department for Communities Safeguarding Children and Adults in the Arts and Culture Sector Project.

This is a free service provided by Volunteer Now Enterprises Ltd, for groups funded by us, and is in the second year of the project, providing policy and practice reviews as well as safeguarding training.

It is best practice to review your safeguarding policy and update your training every three years, so it is very timely for organisations to avail of these services tailored for our sector.

Roisin Timlin, the Training and Development Officer for the project, can help you assess your practice against a simple checklist of standards that are intended to be the minimum standards of practice in organisations that are working with children and young people, adults or both. The checklist is based on the good practice guidance as outlined in both Keeping Children Safe: Our Duty to Care and Keeping Adults Safe: A Shared Responsibility

Many of you have already availed of the support and it is encouraging for us to see the impact of the review and or training on your safeguarding practice. For example the Nerve Centre said:

“The support I received from Volunteer Now Enterprises was really great, the knowledge is vast and the whole process was really beneficial for us. It was a great opportunity to review policies and procedures with the expertise and guidance from the Development Officer. The policy review process was very thorough and it was lovely to hear positive feedback on what we were doing right as well as recommendations of where we could improve. The one to one session, the email/telephone correspondence and the group training was all very much appreciated, all in all it was a very positive experience”.

A wide range of safeguarding training has been delivered and more dates will be coming soon – so watch this space! Some participant feedback is outlined below:

“Very informative and helpful for our organisation. Lots of information we can use to help our organisation move forward”.

“Excellent delivery which was easily understood”.

“It has been great to review and rethink safeguarding”.

“Fantastic recap and introduction to the safeguarding process”.

Safeguarding those in the Arts and Culture sector is so important to us, therefore I can’t impress how invaluable this free service is. I really encourage you to avail of it. Contact Roisin Timlin for more information and to access training and or a policy review roisin.timlin@volunteernow.co.uk